Police union paper refers to Pomper incident as “jihad” (Stranger)

Seattle Police Officers Guild President Rich O’Neill wonders if some reporters were in the same courtroom he was for the inquest of Officer Ian Birk, who fatally shot John T. Williams last August at Boren Avenue and Howell Street.

“What I found intriguing is that when an officer’s memory doesn’t match the video, the anti-police zealots scream that the officer is lying,” O’Neill wrote in the guild’s newspaper, The Guardian. “No one seemed to bay any eye when the civilian witnesses had to admit that their memory didn’t match the video.

He said he’s certain Birk wanted the incident to end in a different way.

In the February issue of The Guardian. O’Neill also questioned why the ACLU isn’t coming to the aid of Steve Pomper, the officer who wrote a Guardian article and spoke out against some practices of the city’s racial profile training.

O’Neill writes that it appears the ACLU appears to only stand up for people wanting to express liberal views against a liberal government.

He said some officers listen to NPR and contribute to liberal causes, while others vote Republican in every election and listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. O’Neill writes that each officer checks their personal opinions at the door.

Some critics disagree.

Writing about one of those critics, The Stranger, O’Neill said that he found the newspaper as credible as The National Enquirer.

It also includes an article by Officer Aaron Stoltz, who was hired in 1995, referring to the recent outcry against Pomper’s statements as “the City’s jihad against those apostates who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid.”

Dominic Holden, who brought attention to The Guardian in The Stranger, has the article posted here as a PDF after O’Neill’s. The Guardian is published for union officers and not otherwise available online.